The production of hollow plastic containers is almost universally carried out on split blow mold machines. Such machines are capable of high capacity output, indeed, in some cases as many as 1600 bottles/hour can be produced. Collecting the containers as they are produced is usually achieved by channeling the containers to a large storage hopper. Storage in the hopper is without regard to orientation of the containers. Since the containers must be packaged in boxes for shipment, it is highly desirable that their removal from the hopper be achieved in a manner resulting in uniform container orientation. With the containers uniformly oriented, the use of automatic loading equipment is possible. Even if the packaging is done by hand, orientation of the containers aids in reducing packaging time. Also, in some cases, it is desirable to decorate the containers prior to their shipment and thus proper orientation is necessary for the acceptance of the containers by the decoration equipment.
Presently, there are various unscrambler-unloader devices on the market which have enjoyed some success in orienting containers as they are unloaded from the storage hopper. However, these devices suffer two major drawbacks, that is they have a low unloading-orienting rate and they tend to scuff the containers making them unsuitable for high quality decorations. The scuffing is generally attributed to the fact that small capacity hoppers must be utilized with these devices and to the fact that cleated belts are utilized in achieving the orienting-unloading steps.
It is therefore an object of this invention to provide an unscrambler-unloader which is capable of a high rate of output but which, at the same time, is almost completely benign to the containers passed through the device. It is also an object of this invention to achieve the aforementioned object with a very quiet and simple unit.